July 21, 2010

The Role Of Effective Leadership To The Success Of An Organisation/Business - A Case Study Of UT Holdings, Ghana

The Role Of Effective Leadership To The Success Of An Organisation/Business - A
Case Study Of UT Holdings, Ghana

Introduction

Leadership is
a significant aspect of any organisation. For decades, the issue on leadership
has been undertaken in various research and related discussion. In fact the
study on leadership dates back in 1921 (Hughes, Ginnett & Curphy, 1999, p. 8).
Among the many definition of leadership, the most relevant definitions were
given by Yukl (2002) and Schein (1992). Yukl (2002) defined leadership as the
process of inspiring other people to comprehend and agree on what needs to be
done and how to accomplish them effectively. In addition, leadership is also
defined as the process of facilitating collective and individual efforts to
fulfill shared objectives.

The performance of the
organization not only relies on the financial resources, the company is also
dependent on the people who are working in the company. One of the most
essential members of an organization is the leader. Accordingly, the presence of
a strong and effective leadership in the information generation imposes great
accountabilities to the company’s team and management networks. This is because
leadership context implies the entire capacity of the company’s performance.
Different authors have provided their perception and assumptions about
leadership and Stephen R. Covey (2004) is never an exemption. Primarily, the
goal of this paper is to analyse the idea of Covey (2004) that effective leaders
help others to find their voice and to express it. Herein, the discussion will
focus on how leaders accomplish those two important tasks and why these aspects
are important. Primarily, the main goal of this paper is to analyze the role of
effective leadership to the success of UT Holdings in Ghana.

Effective Leadership

To be an effective and efficient leader, an individual should have
encompassed the attitude and behaviour based on the leadership contexts.
Accordingly, the leader of UT Holdings in Ghana has been able to possess some
qualities of an effective leader enabling the company to be competitive in the
market place. As mentioned above, Covey (2004) has noted that effective leaders
help others, specifically their subordinates to find their voice and to express
it. This means that an effective leader considered the voice or the opinions of
his subordinates to have as successful outcome. In addition, this could also
mean that an effective leader enables the people to express what they feel or
how they feel to build a strong relationship. In order to achieve such
responsibilities, the leader can consider different ways and one of these is
through empowerment. It is known that any organisations need empowerment of
people. The leader can use empowerment as an approach for enhancing the
satisfaction of employees.

Through the approach used by the CEO
of the UT Holding, the leader allows the staff to be more productive in any
project to come up with a better solution or options. This can be done through
monthly meeting to know from the employees how they are able to do their job and
to know which organizational activities need some enhancement. Through the
quality of the leader of UT Holdings, the employees have been able to gain self
confidence in making decision in the future.

By being
charismatic and efficient, the leader of UT Holdings enables the employees to
enhance their communication skills and to learn to interact efficiently with
their co-employees, management and also clients. This kind of leader sees to it
that he communicates with his employees from time to time to the entire members
for different purposes such as for monitoring or evaluating of for letting then
express their opinion. Such approach can result to increase self-esteem,
competence and self-respect which rare very important in enabling the employee
to have the guts to express their opinions to the leaders and convey what they
think would be best for their company.

Aside from this, being an effective leader also helps the UT
Holdings to create an environment in the working place which results in
employees feeling comfortable and better about them which enables them to become
more expressive at work. The leader can also have use convenient and comfortable
working environment to raise an individual’s self-esteem. It is said that by
creating this kind of working environment, employees can feel that they belong
and all their opinion regarding organizational operations matter for the leader
and for the company.

The leader has been able to help employees to voice out and express
it by making them feel that their individualities are important and each of them
have their own opinion and this opinion is important. Since employees have
different values and personalities, each of them may find it difficult to
interact and communicate with other employees. Hence, to help them feel that
they are important in the company and their recommendations and suggestions are
essential, effective communication approach is needed. Through this behaviour of
the UT Holdings leader, the management are abl eto influence the behaviour of
the employees through an effective communication. It is said that internal
communication is linked to a more confident and value oriented employees. It can
be said that leadership is considered as an attitude (Secretan, 1997) which is
expressed via personal accountability to create a difference in the lives of the
people, colleagues and community and this can be done by letting them voice out
what they think and express their opinions.

Conclusion

Based on the analysis above, an effective leader can help their
subordinate to voice out and express their opinion through empowerment, enhance
communication skills and enhance interpersonal skills. In can be concluded that
knowing the views and opinions of the employees, is important to ensure that
organizational objectives are always achieved. The leaders can use different
ways to be effective and to enhance the performance of the organisation.